At the start of 1969,
Paris undertook what has been called “the move of the century”,
transferring the central food market from its long established home
in the Halles to Rungis, outside Paris. This was not only significant
in terms of food; the glass and iron pavilions of les Halles had long
been part of the Paris landscape. Within a few years, most would be
torn down, the remaining two moved elsewhere.
The Halles best known to
Parisians was defined by these iconic structures and by its nickname
as “the Belly of Paris”. But in fact the pavilions had only been
built in 1854, whereas the market itself was many centuries older.
Nor was it, at its start, a food market.
The lengthy and
little-known history of the Halles is one of urbanism – the early
expansion of Paris –, of shifts in royal authority, of changes in
economic models and even, arguably, of yet another example of Eastern
influence following the Crusades. It has now been explored by a
number of writers, all writing in French. What follows here is
a look at its first centuries, primarily based on the work of Anne
Lombard-Jourdan and Léon
Biollay.
The bishop's ditch
The story of the Halles
begins with a cemetery. Later this would become the Cemetery of the
Holy Innocents, but well before that, the Merovingians buried their
dead in part of a space that was, for a very long time, unsettled and
well outside Paris. The cemetery was still in use in the ninth
century, when the Normans, besieging Paris, destroyed it. About a
century later, another cemetery was established there and it became
an important one. It was part of a larger site, to the northwest of
Paris, known as the Champeaux – the “Little Fields”.
As had had happened elsewhere in France over time, an informal market
grew up around this cemetery.
It was not unusual in
such circumstances for ecclesiastics to claim control of the
resulting commerce. As it happens, the Bishop of Paris, Étienne
de Senlis, was already laying claim (using, says Lombard-Jourdan,
fake documents) to most of the western part of the Right Bank. At
some point before 1137, he enclosed the area of the market in a
ditch, so that the site in the Champeaux was known as “the Bishop's
ditch” (fossatum episcopi) or “the ditch of the Champeau”
(fossatum Campelli).
Surrounding the space
with a ditch was more than a material gesture; it created a definable
space under the bishop's authority. In 822, for instance, Louis the
Pious had granted immunity to property around the abbey of Aniane,
but on condition that it be surrounded "by ditches, hedges or
any other sort of enclosure." The case of the bishop's ditch
around the Champeau is somewhat more complicated, since the bishop
had already extended his authority over much of this and neighboring
areas. Still, the cemetery and the informal market around it had been
open to all comers and this was a start of limiting it as a space.
In 1137, King Louis VI
(reigned 1108-1137) arranged to share this space with the bishop. The
king's interest in the market has been variously explained, but one
consideration seems to have been to wrest control of markets and
fairs away from the Church; Lombard-Jourdan: "When the Capetians began to reside
in a more consistent manner in their Palace in the Cité,
the Parisian fairs and markets were all, or almost, in the hands of
ecclesiastics."
This was not universally
the case. The old Roman forum (both meeting place and market) had
been on the Left Bank, but was no longer mentioned in later
centuries. Abbo, writing in the ninth century, mentions a market in
the Cité (urbs).
About a century and a half later, there is mention of an "old
market" (vetus forum) which Lombard-Jourdan places on the
"Strand" - that is, the place de Grève,
which would later be the site of the Town Hall (not to mention
numerous executions). If the "old market" was not under the
Church's authority, nor was it under the King's; it seems to have
been regarded as community property.
So, says Lombard-Jourdan,
“the agreement concluded in 1137 between Louis VI and bishop
Étienne of Senlis
regarding the 'ditch of the Champeaux' is the first sign of royalty
taking economic activity back in hand, a first effort to substitute
the king's authority for that of the Bishop." They agreed to
share the taxes, rents, fines, etc., the king and his associates
keeping two thirds, the bishop and his successors only one.
If the bishop accepted a
lesser share, she says, it was because of the value of having the
king's caution. Note that the ditch surrounded an existing, but
informal market. Six months after their agreement, the king decided,
on August 1, 1137 that the "new market" (novum forum)
would from now on take place at the Champeaux. His son would later
say that he had stabilivit the market, which might in one
reading mean he had founded it, but here seems more like to mean that
he had simply stabilized it; that is, made it official.
Lombard-Jourdan cites
this description of the space from centuries later, suggesting that
it remained roughly the same:
The territory of this direct royal domain forms a rather large space..., beginning in the rue Saint-Honoré, between that of the Prouvaires and that of the Tonnellerie, following the length of the latter and turning with it until the Saint-Eustache point, rising from there until the ancient hostelry of the Paon, which still exists today, returning by the pillars called those of the Pilory and following them until the rue Pirouette-en-Terrouenne, then regaining the pillars of the tin Potters until the charnel-houses of the Holy Innocents [cemetery], from which it returns to the rue Saint-Honoré, formerly called at this point the rue de la Charronnerie, and from the end of this street, where the old Cat square had been, returning to the corner of the rue de la Tonnellerie.
This is from 1728, but
copied from the Terrier de Louis XII (reigned 1498-1515), and
so likely to reflect sixteenth century data. But anyone who wants a
rough idea of the original space can still find some of these streets
on modern maps and easily enough identify the others. Otherwise, it is
credible that these boundaries corresponded to the original space in
the Champeaux.
In 1138, Louis VI's son,
Louis VII, mentioned mercers and money-changers on the site. It seems
probable, says Lombard-Jourdan, that these professions were already
long-standing by then. This raises one question which she does not
address: was the “old market” limited to similar professions or
was it a more general one? Unfortunately, too little is known of the
earlier Parisian markets to say. But Biollay suggests that then or
soon after wheat was also traded in the new market.
Meanwhile, a market for
livestock already existed just south of the ditch; it is subsequently
mentioned as “the old place of Pigs”. The latter often invaded
the cemetery and left their “filth” in it. Lombard-Jourdan: “Sale
of livestock, sale of manufactured products: cloth, dry goods, are,
originally, more the activities of a fair than a market.”
Right from the start,
exceptions were made to the space's function. Before his death, Louis
VI granted an abbey the right to three lodgers and an income “in
the new market”. In a more curious case, Louis VII granted Adelende
Gente the right to build lodgings (probably for artisans and
merchants) and an oven in the heart of the market. What inspired this
unique generosity?
Adelende had grown up
with Louis VI and his wife; why, Lombard-Jourdan does not say. But
they continued to show interest in her affairs later. She seems to
have been agreeable; she was called "Gente" for her
graciousness. She was married to a doctor, master Obizon, who
replaced Louis' Jewish doctor from Avignon, Tsour, who died in 1122.
Outwardly, this was a desirable marriage; Obizon was a person of some
importance. But the two were soon separated and in 1128 officially
divided their goods.
Nor is it clear why a
woman who appeared to have both royal protection and means built an
oven and lodgings at the heart of the market. But soon after his
father's agreement with the bishop, Louis VII granted her property
there immunity, meaning not only that no rights were due on it but
even that royal agents were not to enter it. He also ruled that hers
would be the only oven in the enclosure.
Sometime later, Adelende
gave all this to the monks of the nearby St. Martin in the Fields.
Over time, this would cause all manner of irritations to several
kings, as the monks fought to maintain the right (having, apparently,
lost the original paperwork, but "repurposed" other
documents to support their claim). Among other things, they long had
the exclusive right to bake bread in the Halles. The structure itself
became known as "the house of the Rappée"
and later hosted the most important tavern in the market.
The Champeaux may also
already have been used for executions, but the first mention of these
there comes from Le Breton, referring to members of a heretical sect
under Philip-August: “They were arraigned before the court of king
Philip, who, as a very Christian and Catholic king, having called his
guards, had them all burned, outside the gate of Paris, in a place
called Champeaux.”
Louis VII continued his
father's interest in commerce, taking twenty pounds a year from the
Saint-Lazare (or St. Ladre; Holy Leper) fair and gave his protection
to the St-Germain-de-Près
Fair in exchange for half its income. These fairs, held six
months apart, were increasingly successful but also under
ecclesiastical control. Then he renounced all rights to the
Saint-Lazare fair, but reserved the right to punish thieves and
protect the merchants there. He also extended the fair's duration
several times. Lombard-Jourdan writes, in her study of the origins of
Paris:
Whether it concerns the "Champeau ditch", the Saint-Lazare fair or that of Saint-Germain, one can thus follow the evolution of Parisian commerce, from the time of spontaneous gatherings of merchants, passing by the stage of exchanges guarded and protected by the Church, until being taken in hand by Capetian royalty. In this last domain, Louis VI and Louis VII began with energy and lucidity the action which Philip August brought to fruition.
In 1181, the latter
bought the rights to the St. Lazare fair from the lepers. Among other
things this fair, held near the Champeaux, had competed with the market while
being held; now it was transferred to the Champeaux itself.
The first halles
In 1183, Philip August
had two large buildings "commonly called halles" built in
the Champeaux, as several had urged him to. Not only did these buildings
protect goods – at this point largely textiles – from bad
weather, the king had a wall built around them with “enough”
doors which could be locked at night. These were protection against
thieves. Finally, stalls were built between the walls and the
buildings.
The outer wall which he built then... definitively marked, it seems, the limits of the halles from the north of the wheat market until the rue de la Ferronerie... Substantial buildings replaced, over time the shelters and stalls without going beyond the space circumscribed by the wall of 1183, with the exception of the fish market built on the neighboring square in Louis IX's times. Until the XVIth century, houses, shops climbed the two sides of the "King's wall", these "large" or "ancient" walls, so often mentioned in the texts.
(Lombard-Jourdan, Origines)
(The term "halles" referred to the covered structures and according to Diderot's
Encyclopedia still did in the eighteenth century, even if some
used the term to refer to the market itself. Biollay however points
out that some sites within the market later referred to as “halles”
were not covered.)
The year before, Philip
had expelled the Jews of Paris (whom he would later be obliged to
recall). A papal bulle from the start of the twelfth century is said
to mention Jews in the Champeaux; some of their land, claimed by the
Crown, also became part of the Halles.
Even as the market itself
was enclosed, the cemetery beside it, the cemetery of the Holy
Innocents, was open to anyone who wanted to cross it or use it for
other purposes. With the growing market, more and more people did so.
Some showed merchandise there; prostitutes plied their trade; both
men and pigs left their excrement; the ground became a muddy mass of
filth. In 1186, the King, hearing of this, took it seriously enough
not only to have a wall, again with doors, built, but to have it made
of stone and “high enough, like those made around castles and
cities”. Whereas before the cemetery had been shapeless, it became
a rectangle of about 6800 square meters, making it the largest
cemetery in Paris. The walls remained essentially the same until
1786, when the cemetery, now crowded not only with private chapels,
arcades used as charnel-houses and other structures, but over-crowded
with the dead, was removed, and the bones dispersed into what today
are the Catacombs.
Within a few years,
Philip had new walls built around Paris and these included, within
their northwestern quadrant, the Little Fields. The market was now
part of Paris, not outside it.
By 1263, three halles existed.
According to Biollay, St. Louis (reigned 1226-1270) built the two halles for fish. Biollay says, though without citing
specifics, that sale of grains at the Champeaux had preceded the
founding of the Halles, "because of the insufficience of the
market of the Jewry". The fish found in St. Louis' new halle was
the only other foodstuff sold; this, says Biollay, was to facilitate
the King's "right of [first] taking" (droit de prise), as
specified in a statute of July 7, 1307:
And let all fish unloaded at the stone where we are, either in Paris or elsewhere, and when our cooks or those who take for us, for the queen or for our children, will have taken what they wish, the others will take what is their need, except what is taken by others with a right to it.
These first foods then
were exceptional in what was still above all a textiles and dry goods
market.
Saint Louis also granted
a charitable dispensation to the poor who dealt in linen, second-hand
clothes and small shoes, allowing them to set up stalls along the
walls of the cemetery. His son, Philip the Bold (reigned 1270 – 1285), had
a halle built there, but, in 1278, confirmed his father's
declaration. The structure, whose income does not appear in later
accounts, lasted into the reign of Henry II (reigned 1547-1559). (The
rue de la Lingerie references this institution.)
Philip the Bold also had a halle built
for the skin dressers and shoemakers, the latter finished in 1278.
By 1320, the Halles were “finished”;
that is, as they would be for several centuries after. Biollay:
The completion of the agglomeration of the Halles then was accomplished from 1263 to 1320; this was for France a relatively happy time, marked by considerable material and economic progress. A more regular regime favored the development of commerce and agriculture and attempts were made to draw foreign merchants by privileges. The extension of the great Parisian market was the necessary consequence of the progress realized.
With all the official
steps, the growth of the market to this point can also be viewed as
an organic extension of the city, and this is how Raoul de Presles, a
fourteenth century figure, described it:
Near this cemetery a market began to be held, and it was called the Little Fields because it was all fields; and this place has still retained this name. And, because of the market, first people began to make shelters and little cabins.... And bit by bit houses were built, and made halles there to sell all sorts of goods. And so the city grew as far as the Saint Denis gate.
Changes in the business model
In 1263, Saint Louis
ceded one of the halles to the mercers on the condition that they not
only pay him a rent but see to all repairs and even rebuild the
structure at their own cost should it be destroyed. The result was a
steady revenue for the Crown, and this became the model going
forward. By 1368, all the trades established there paid rent and saw
to maintenance. This became obligatory for a growing number; in 1380,
the second-hand clothes dealers were not only obliged to leave
another location to fill an empty spot in the Halles, but to build
shelters and pave the roads.
Says Biollay, “It was
not with a selfless intention that the royal domain ensured itself
the entire ownership of the market of the Champeaux and that it
eliminated the competition that the St. Laurent fair could have
offered this new establishment.” By the fourteenth century, royal
acts treat as long-standing the obligation for certain products to be
brought to the Halles. This obligation originally only applied once a
week.
The charges and the costs which this obligation of frequenting the "King's market" imposed on Parisian merchants was not without compensation for them. The competition from itinerant merchants was limited to market days, during which the prud'hommes of the trades exercised their juridiction and their oversight on the merchandise brought by outside merchants.
Thus organized, the Halles must have resembled the bazaars of cities of the Orient, where all commercial activity is concentrated. The establishment of obligatory markets in the Champeaux was perhaps only an import due to the Crusades.
As one proof of this, Biollay points
out that at this time only “several” cities in the kingdom had
such obligations. Certainly the one detailed description of these
early Halles, which mainly sold cloth and dry goods, might almost
have come from the Thousand and One Nights. In 1323, Jean de
Jandun (c. 1285–1323), a visitor from the northern town of Senlis,
wrote:
This joyous stay of the most agreeable distractions offers, in very large displays full of inestimable treasures, all the most diverse types of showpieces united in the house called the Halles of the Champeaux. There, if you have the desire and the means, you can buy all the types of ornaments that the most practiced industry can provide, that the most inventive spirit hurries to imagine to fulfill all your desires.... in several places in the lower parts of this market, and so to say in heaps, piles of other merchandise, are found cloths more beautiful the one than the other, superb pelisses, some made from animal skins, others from silk stuffs, others finally made of fine and foreign materials... In the upper part of the building, which forms something like a street of a stunning length, are shown all the objects which serve to adorn the different parts of the human body: for the head, crowns, braids, caps; ivory combs for the hair, mirrors for looking at oneself, belts for the hips, purses to hang at one's side, gloves for the hands, necklaces for the chest, and other things of this type, which I cannot cite, more because of the poverty of Latin words than for lack of having seen them. But, so that the innumerable splendors of these brilliant objects, whose variety and infinite number resist a complete and detailed description, can at least be suggested in a superficial ensemble, let me put it this way: In these showplaces, the regards of strollers see so many decorations for entertainments for weddings and great feasts smiling to their eyes, that after having half perused one row an impetuous desire takes them towards the other, and that after having crossed the full length an insatiable need to renew this pleasure, not once nor twice, but as if indefinitely, in returning to the start, would make them restart the tour, if they were to trust their desire.
Whatever Eastern model
might have suggested regular, rent-based markets, Biollay sees a
practical advantage in this development. Typically markets had
charged a tonlieu, which might be variously described as a
toll or even something like a sales tax. This was practical in
smaller contexts, but as cities grew, trying to guarantee payment
with the means of the period grew more problematic. With a market
like the Halles, the authorities no longer had to concern themselves
with these difficulties (at least with its regular tenants); payment was provided in the form of a rent
or subscription and, for an increasing number of trades, transactions
at the market were obligatory. (In fact, in later statutes, both in
Paris and elsewhere, a frequent stipulation was that goods were not
to be intercepted for purchase before they had reached the official
market.)
In prosperous times,
these requirements were accepted with good will. However, as the
fourteenth century progressed and times became more uncertain and
commerce declined, less merchants came and the authorities were less
able to enforce their attendance. They also stopped maintaining their
locales.
The royal Domain then
suffered a double prejudice. The collection of rights of tonlieu was
subject to fraud; the Halles fell into ruin. Reforming commissioners
were named in 1368 to reestablish the observance of the ordinances.
Various problems of currency, obstructive regulations, attempts at
price regulation, etc. “obliged the authorities to intervene in
order to ensure the provisioning of the markets. Prescriptions
relative to the obligatory bringing of goods and markets became more
rigorous.”
One effect was to
increase the number of days on which the market was obligatory. On
October 13, 1368, these were set as Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Protests led to some modification in these for selected trades. "It
was by constraint that Parisian commerce was brought back to the
Halles and constraint had to be used to keep it there."
Patent letters from January 28, 1454
stated;
Our Halles by lack of support have fallen into ruin and how many of these halles were rebuilt by our statute and put in good and proper state, all roads, despite the said discontinuation, the merchants tradespeople and others do not want to go there to establish nor sell their goods to the prejudice of the public good and the diminishing of our domain.
Such efforts were repeated in the year
that followed. But, says Biollay,
From then on, the royal Domain gave up on bringing back to the Halles the artisans and shopkeepers who had deserted them; the destination of this market was to change and the transformation it would undergo in the XVIth century would be the result of the elimination of obligatory market days and the falling away of the regulations which ordered them.
The sixteenth century
changes were profound and beyond our scope here. But already one
change crept in: almost imperceptibly, the Halles began to change
from a dry goods market to a food market.
Food
comes to Les Halles
Jandun's
vivid description above says not a word about food. Despite the
exceptions of wheat and fish, the fourteenth century market was still
not a food market. Its focus on dry goods and textiles is reflected in the street names, many named,
then or later, for the trade or products they housed: la Ganterie
(glove makers); la rue de la Lingerie (linen makers); la Frepperie
(second hand clothes dealers); la place aux Toiles (cloths); la rue
de la Chanvoirrie (hemp).
As
late as 1523, outside merchants could sell poultry, game and other
meats at the Cossonnerie and at the Paris Gate; fresh water fish at
the Paris Gate, the Petit-Pont and the Baudoyer gate; eggs, cheese
and butter at the Saint-Jean cemetery and on the rue
Neuve-Notre-Dame. Only in 1590, after important changes at the
Halles, was the latter explicitly named among these. (The status of the Cossonnerie is ambivalent, since Biollay includes some trade there as being in the Halles.)
Biollay
gives one explanation for this:
Near the limits of Paris, in quarters still taking shape, the Halles could not become from the start a market for provisions. No doubt access to the Halles was not forbidden to outside vendors who wanted to bring goods there; that is proven by the taxes to which they were subject and which the trade registers mention. But the marginal location of this market, the small space available, the liberty left to itinerant merchants to frequent the markets which suited them the best, contributed to prolonging the existence of the old centers of provisions of the rue Neuve-Notre-Dame, the Paris Gate, the Petit-Pont, the Baudoyer gate and the old Saint Jean cemetery, where the sellers and the buyers were accustomed to interact.
Even
the sale of livestock had ended by 1292, when the tax rolls referred
to “the old place of Pigs”.
Biollay
believes, credibly, that the sale of food began informally through
resellers, who had no official place in the market. The
fact that they had no official status, however, does not mean they
were free from oversight. Under Saint Louis, the voyer
(that is, the official in charge of the voies,
or roads) had the right to collect charges from various retailers,
including “the rights due from the cheese
mongers who sold in the halles before the Rappée
house; those paid by the renters of stalls 'for crapois [whale
blubber]', for figs and grapes, 'from before the box of the Halles
until the mercery'...”
Note
that the latter defined the space later taken up by the market of the
Poirées,
or green-goods.
The
same document declares that the voyer assigned "because of his
office places in which to sell needles... and those to sell butter,
eggs, cheese, garlic, onions, cabbage, leeks and other greens..."
The fact that these foods were on a par with needles – that is, a
minor accessory to the main dry goods trade – gives a good idea of
their place in the market at this point.
Biollay
points out that the profits the voyer made from these transactions
may be one reason that food was slow to take its place among the
official items in the market (at which point the King's Domain, not
the voyer, reaped the benefit).
Boileau's
thirteenth century Livre des metiers also mentions fruit and
"all sort of aigrun" being brought to the Halles.
Biollay interprets the latter as meaning vegetables, but in fact it
was a more nuanced word referring to various “tart” foods, which
could include garlic, onions, scallions, but also tart fruits, such
as oranges. Boileau also mentions resellers buying these products to
resell them at the Halles; this gives an idea of the low-level nature
of this early food trade in the Halles.
By
the early fifteenth century, the Halles was already, if still
unofficially, one of the main places to buy food. The “Bourgeois of
Paris” who left a journal of the troubled years from 1405
to 1449, mentions various foods at the Halles at several points. When
a truce in 1416
allowed
food into Paris, he wrote that “so
many goods came to Paris, of bacon, of pressed [that is, hard]
cheeses, that they were piled in the Halles as high as a man”. In
1426, “there were so many cherries that many times one had 9
pounds of them at the Paris Halles for 4
parisis deniers”. In 1430, a shortage of oil led people to “eat
butter in that Lent, from the Halles, as in meat-eating time.”
He
also mentions in that year, as he does in several others, executions
in the Halles, this of a group of marauders. Ten had their heads cut
off;
but then:
The eleventh was a very handsome young son of about 23 years, he was stripped and his eyes ready to blindfold, when a young girl born in the Halles came boldly to ask and did so much for his good redemption that he was returned to the Châtelet, and since they were married together.
(Such
stories are found elsewhere and often involved women, like
prostitutes, whose prospects were otherwise poor. Whether anything is
implied here by the girl being born in the Halles is unclear.)
In
1444, when produce was plentiful, he said that one could have “the
most beautiful bunch of leeks from the Halles for 1 denier." In 1447, he describes piles of pears at the Halles, in piles like
coal, “not only one, but 6
or 7
piles, and as many or more apples brought from the regions of
Langedoc, of Normandy and several other regions.”
All
this shows the Halles as a standard place to go for many foods. But
note that the
Bourgeois
is writing from an individual's point of view; this was a retail, not
a wholesale trade, as it largely was later.
Nor
is
it clear if any
official halle existed
for
all this trade at this point (though
the market for green-goods – see below – probably grew up around
this time).
One
item one might have expected to see sold, along with wheat, was wine,
long a staple of commerce in France. But in 1192 Philip-August
ordered that itinerant wine merchants sell their products from boats.
By the fourteenth century, they were allowed to take them to the
Halles, probably, says Biollay, because the wines in question were
local and so brought by land. The halle where they could be sold was
known as the Étape
(the Stage). This trade, however, was never very important and the
location itself seems to have been too small for the trade, so that
in 1413, noting that the wine wagons were blocking neighboring
streets, patent letters had the trade transferred to the Grève.
In
later centuries, the bread market at the Halles would be one of the
most important in Paris. Bread was sold relatively early there,
starting once a week in the twelfth century, but the trade was not
significant for a long time. In 1305, its sale was briefly authorized
all week, but in 1307, this was cut back to Wednesdays and Saturdays,
and this would remain the case through the eighteenth century.
No
separate place was set for bread sales (though perhaps the Rappée's
old privilege allowed it to sell the bread from its oven directly).
Biollay suggests it was probably sold at the wheat market.
Poultry
too was sold in the Halles, starting once a week in the twelfth
century. This still applied in 1364. Once again, there was no halle
for this retail trade, but a document of 1350 refers to two places
where poultry was sold: the rue Neuve-Notre-Dame and, in the Halles,
the rue de la Cossonnerie. In 1590, poultry was still sold in this
same street.
The
first new halles for food came at the start of the fifteenth century.
The halle of Beauvais was originally for textiles from that region,
but was vacant by 1416. The great butchery of the Paris Gate had then
been demolished and in August of the year a royal butchery with
sixteen stalls was created in part of that halle. This was known as
the Butchery of Beauvais and would survive past the “reform” of
the sixteenth century, undergoing several changes along the way.
The
transfer was not exclusive. The Bourgeois wrote:
The first week of the following September, the butchers were forbidden to any longer sell their meat on the Notre Dame bridge, and in this said week they began to sell at the halle of Beauvais, on the Petit-Pont, at the Baudays gate, and about 15 days later they began to sell in front of Saint-Lieufray at the Trou-Pugnais.
Until
this point, says Biollay, butchers had paid a charge which released
them from any obligation of selling at the
Halles. This is strange, however, since it implies that they
otherwise would have been obliged to use a facility which until this
point was not specifically equipped for butchering. In the eighteenth
century, butchers still often slaughtered their animals in the
street, resulting in a notorious stench, not to mention blood-sleeked
streets. It is unlikely that the activity
was any more
self-contained
in these earlier years.
To
complicate matters, the Bourgeois wrote in 1421 that “the Sunday
before Pentecost the butchers began to sell meat at the Paris gate,
and left the Saint-Jean cemetery, Petit-Pont, the Beauvais halle and
other butcheries which had been made before.” Since the butchers
were still found in the Beauvais halle later, this situation clearly
proved to be temporary; was it a momentary protest or, perhaps, due
to the troubled circumstances of the time?
It
may be relevant that a revaluation of the currency had just caused a
steep rise in prices, leading to frank profiteering by merchants so
that
the poor people suffered so much poverty, hunger, cold and other misfortunes, that no one knows but God in Paradise, because when the dog killer had killed the dogs, the poor people followed him to the fields to have the flesh or the guts to eat.
The
next major halle for food had a particular significance, according to
Biollay:
The most important of the secondary markets, the most interesting even, because it became with the fish halles the heart of the current halles, that is the halle of Green Goods (Poirées), called indifferently "halle" or "market".
The Green Goods halle appears in the 1484 accounts: the account of 1447 mentions a house "before the market of 'Green Goods'” and along the Four-Saint-Martin alley. This market appears again in the account for 1450 and in that of 1472.
From
its name alone, this market no doubt was for the sale of vegetables
and herbs; probably, like the market of the same name centuries
later, it also provided an outlet for fruit.
By
the end of the fifteenth century then, dedicated halles existed for
wheat, fish, meat and greens. Meanwhile, Paris itself continued to grow, so that what had been an outlying part of the city ended up, over time, at its center. The Halles was still not “the belly
of Paris” and even physically it would undergo further changes.
Before Baltard designed his iconic pavilions in the mid-nineteenth
century, the Halles would undergo the “reform” of the sixteenth
century and a series of other changes; there is far more to its story
going forward. But we have seen here how a small market by a cemetery
grew to a major textiles and dry goods market and then, as the Middle
Ages ended, moved a good way towards its later role as one of the
world's most famous food markets.
FOR FURTHER READING
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halles_de_Paris
Lombard-Jourdan
(Anne). Aux origines de Paris: la genèse de la Rive droite
jusqu'en 1223. 1985
The Medieval Walls of Phillipe-Auguste, Chez Jim web site
"Le Mur", Paris à l'époque de Philippe Auguste
Rigord, Guilelmus Brito-Amoricus, Œuvres
de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste:
Philippide de Guillaume le Breton, 1885
No comments:
Post a Comment